After getting the location of Isaac's laboratory, Bill proceeded to finish finalizing his shopping list while having Nelson begin to distribute wages.
While the Marines cheered after receiving their wages, which included a substantial hazard-pay bonus, Bill found Yoko who was in the middle of trying to secretly pull down the pants of a Fish-man while one of her clones attempted to tie together two shoes belonging to a sitting human.
“Listen.” He said sternly as he lifted her off the ground by the back of her coat. Now that the girl had a degree of super strength, he could be somewhat rougher in how he handled her.
“Hi Bill!” she laughed back with a wide smile.
Seeing her smile, he smiled a little too, but then caught himself as he chided her actions. Telling her to not cause trouble and act her age, he then instructed her to paint the Marine symbol on the sides of Boss and finally that she’d be sorry if he had to come looking for her.
Happily agreeing to paint Boss, he reminded her to do a good job, and if she couldn’t to find Pearson.
“Don’t worry Bill, I’m an excellent painter!” She said with a laugh, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Boss start turning a lighter shade of blue.
He let her down while shaking his head and then gathered his list and headed off the ship.
Even in a Marine-controlled port they wouldn’t leave the ship unattended. The six Officers would take turns staying on board. The duos were naturally Ricky and Sasha, Pearson and Willy, then finally Nelson and Miyagi.
For now, it was Nelson and Miyagi who was staying on board, and behind Bill a throng of his men spoke back and forth while walking towards Steel City.
Bill also wanted to explore around but his first order of business was to hire the ports shipwrights to repair the damage done to his office and replace whatever needed to be.
Vergo had killed most of the ships technically skilled sailors, and since Bill had been too preoccupied with other things, the ship was already starting to show the signs of neglect as small nicks from various battles had begun to turn into slightly larger cracks.
Walking into the Customs office, Bill found the interior to be much simpler that the surrounding architecture would suggest.
There were overhead electric lights, but besides that, it was a brown wooden interior with simple bench-seating which made him think of the offices back on Vallipo.
On the far side of the room was a single large desk, and behind it was a sleeping overweight man wearing a green suit who had a book folded over his face.
Hoping to wake the man up, Bill shut the door hard and made sure his feet could be heard with each step, but despite the clop’ clop’ clop’ sounds, by the time he made it across the room the man behind the counter remained unmoved.
When saying ‘hello’ and knocking on the desk three times still didn’t wake the man, Bill started to reach over to remove the book, but no sooner than he started reaching, the man jumped up as if an explosion had gone off from under him.
Stumbling back with a “Whaaa?!” the overweight man looked up at Bill and with his blood pressure rising, barely stammering out: “o’Ah… Sir! I was just … er’… reading the docking manifest and got lost in thought!”
Nodding along, Bill raised his hand and told the man not to be alarmed. While sleeping on the job was not a good thing, this man wasn’t any sort of sentry and therefor it wasn’t a very serious matter if it only happened on occasion.
After telling the man to calm down, Bill gave his name and rank and then told the man his business.
“Ah, shipwrights? Y.yes Sir, we employ five teams, and we can definitely schedule you in.” Then moving with purpose, the overweight man sat back at his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a somewhat large manifest.
Reading through the document, he let out a series of ‘hms’ and ‘ahs’ before looking back up and saying: “Teams A, B, and C are schedules through at least next week, but we have Team D available in three days.”
Saying this, the man turned a piece of paper around for Bill to see, it was the wages each team charged, and the differences were stark. Team A cost twice as much as Team B, and so on down the list until Team E – who charged a pittance by comparison to the others.
When Bill asked about the reason for the price differences, the man answered in somewhat reverence saying that their Team A could even outperform the shipwrights at the famous Water 7, and besides that, the price reflected the materials each crew worked with.
Since the Frontier Run was a ship whose timber was reinforced by Aramaki, Bill opted for the best treatment possible. Deciding that it was worth it to wait the extra week and spend few million Beli if that meant smooth sailing during the rest of their voyage.
With his main piece of business out of the way, Bill spent some time speaking back and forth with the clerk and realized that no matter how cordial he was being the man never seemed to really relax.
He found it strange, but only strange, and after a few minutes decided to ask for directions and go. With the shipwrights hired, now he needed to replace his Snails and sailing equipment, and to get those he headed towards the Naval Supply Depot.
While Bill headed to the Supply Depot, Yoko was smiling to herself and had just finished painting the Marine symbol on both sides of Boss. She was happily getting ready to explore the island when she heard Nelson call over: “Mind what the Captain told you, little Bell.”
Her smile turned upside down, and looking over at the man, she yelled back: “I know what he said. Bill doesn’t need you to speak for him, Nelson!” before continuing to get her things ready.
For most Marines in the crew this rebuke would have been enough to make them shake their heads and drop it, but for Nelson it wasn’t so simple. He had lived for years on the bad side of the Captain, and had gotten the stick many times, so thought he was being kind by reminding the girl to listen.
For him, being kind was far from a given, and to see his kindness so easily discarded, his mood flipped and as he walked towards Yoko he snapped back loudly: “I’d say, you’re becoming a right hooligan and nincompoop to boot!”
As he neared, his voice got progressively lower until he was standing in front of the teenager: “Take this advice well, you believe that because the Captain loves you, your actions will go unnoticed and without consequence, but I tell you now that if you continue your chicanery then he will react in ways that you may not like!”
Deciding to respond to this reasonable argument by sticking her tongue out and kicking Nelson in the shin, Yoko began to laugh madly and run away while the big man hopped around on one foot crying out ’Hooligan!’ and ‘Nincompoop!’.
Jumping on Boss’s back she urged him to fly north over rows and rows of busy warehouses and shipyards before turning to journey westward. Having peeked at the map that Bill had gotten, she was headed towards forested peninsula called ‘Cannon Cape’.
Of course, she didn’t know what was there, but so what? She and Boss liked the woods and it had been too long since they had seen any.
And plus, who would stop her, she thought?
Bill had told her to not fly over the city or topaz mine, and for now, so be it. But he never mentioned the forests and so if anyone tried to stop her, they naturally couldn’t blame her for the consequences!
Flying low so she could enjoy the views, Boss arrived at a wide hilly grassland which was not too far from the either the city or the forest, where Yoko saw a group of kids playing with sticks and decided to investigate.
Directing the car-sized bug over, they quickly made their dramatic entrance by landing in the dead center of a mock battle in which half the kids wore rags over their lower faces and the others had bandanas over the top of their heads.
The recently molted Boss was a frightening sight but their credit only a few of the kids cried out when he landed with a *thud* and Yoko jumped off his back.
With a group of over twenty kids staring directly at her, Yoko tried to land heroically, then as she was standing up stylishly it struck her that she hadn’t thought of anything cool to say, and because she couldn’t introduce herself, she just stared back at the gawking kids.
This stare down occurred for quite a while until one of the braver boys spoke up by asking who she was, and then like a dam bursting, words flowed out: “I’m Yoko! And this is Boss the Beetle, but you can just call him Boss!”
Then seeing that the kids understood her, but were perhaps too cautious to reply, Yoko continued speaking: “We were going to explore in the forest, but I found you all here, and so I was wondering how come you weren’t playing there? I think playing battles would be more fun in the woods than in boring field!”
This struck a chord and all the kids nodded sadly, until another of the boys spoke up to vent his frustration “We used to play in the forest” then he continued with a balled-up fist “But the pirates took it over while looking for that legendary treasure and the Marines are too cowardly to do anything about them!”
“Marines aren’t afraid of anything!” Yoko interrupted, and when she said this, the group of kids only just seemed to recognize what she was wearing.
‘Haha’ a couple of the boys laughed and then started mocking her that she’d better not go into the woods, or she’d just have to surrender like the rest of the Marines!
Hearing their laughter and jeers for what to her seemed like a long time, Yoko stomped her feet hard enough to crack the ground, and when she did so, the laughing boys turned pale while some of the other smarter kids directly ran off.
But to the others who stayed, she looked at them and said: “You’re lucky I’m not supposed to act up right now or THAT would be YOU! But I’m still going to make you eat those words!”
When the previously laughing boys took a half step away, Yoko waved her hand and said: “Not like that, you guys aren’t even worthy of my hammer! Instead, why don’t we make a deal?”
‘A deal?’ answered the boy who had called Marines cowards.
“Yeah! The deal is this, if I get rid of those pirates then you all have to take back what you said about the Marines and never say another bad word about them ever again!”
At this point, it had to be recognized that Yoko was small for her age. Despite being thirteen she was still slightly under 5ft tall, and though she wasn’t petite, her body still hadn’t grown into anything resembling an adults.
So, it wasn’t a surprise that in front of her claims to get rid of the pirate’s that half of the remaining kids readily agreed while the other half tried to dissuade her from going.
“They even attack kids!” one smaller boy said.
“They like little girls the most!” an older girl chimed in.
“Hahaha, yeah, if you get rid of the pirates in Cannon Cape, I’ll make you my boss!’ one of the older boys added in, and adding to this momentum another boy laughed out that ‘If she gets rid of the pirates in Cannon Cape, I’ll join the Marines myself!’
These two lines seemed to be infectious for that group who had been laughing at her earlier and it wasn’t long before they were all adding in more and more grand claims about what they were willing to do should she somehow actually rid the forest of pirates.
All the while, unbeknownst to them, Yoko was listening to the claims one by one and memorized what each boy and girl wagered. She didn’t speak up until she felt that their bets would equal the seriousness of insulting the Marines.
“Alright!” she finally hollered, and that stopped the rounds of laughter. Then looking at the group gathered in front of her, she said: “You’ve made your bets! Now I need three days and I’ll clean those pirates up. One day to scout. One day to beat them with my hammer. One day to arrest them. So about it, do we have a deal or not?”
When the group heard her, half of them starting to dissuade again her while the other half started to ask what would they get if she lost.
Stumped by this question momentarily, in Yoko’s stated her opinion and offered her side: “You should already be glad I haven’t beaten you for insulting the Marines! But since you want more, how about this. If I win, I get all that you’ve said. If you win, I’ll give you a Devil Fruit.”
“How would she get a Devil Fruit?” asked one kid.
“Just one Devil Fruit?” asked another.
“Just one Devil Fruit!” Yoko erupted before breaking out in irritated laughter: “Do you know how much they’re worth? Do you think Devil Fruits just grow on trees?! If you don’t want to bet, then just take back what you said!” she said with finality and was answered by a blond headed boy who was wearing a big hat with goggles.
“Pirates looking for treasure have overrun our Jewel Island and the Marines can’t do anything about it. If you and that bug can get rid of the pirates then I, Roule Render, will become your Navigator!”
Nodding her head to this, Yoko twirled her hammer around in her fingers before jumping back on Boss.
Urging him to fly towards the forest, she hollered…
“Remember! Three Days!”
While Yoko began her journey, many miles away Bill had purchased a number of Snails to be installed in several areas of the ship and had just made it back to his office.
Sitting at a broken desk, he dialed a familiar frequency and watched as the Snail formed a cowboy hat and mimicked a charming smile.
“New Haven Science Division Headquarters, identify yourself.”
Returning a smile of his own, Bill answered: “Sorry for the delayed communication but we broke ways with the former Admiral. I’ll be sending you our new frequencies now.”
“Good!” Ranse called out on the other line, before quickly saying: “We’ve just got approval for three contracts. We’ll be starting for the East Blue by the end of the week.”
Thinking about their plans finally coming to fruition, Bill suddenly recalled Isaacs technologies and thought that despite everything, coming to the New World may have changed his life.
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic please hit the heart icon and consider leaving a rating!
Boss (after molting)
Spoiler [collapse]Roule Render
Spoiler [collapse]
After getting the location of Isaac's laboratory, Bill proceeded to finish finalizing his shopping list while having Nelson begin to distribute wages.
While the Marines cheered after receiving their wages, which included a substantial hazard-pay bonus, Bill found Yoko who was in the middle of trying to secretly pull down the pants of a Fish-man while one of her clones attempted to tie together two shoes belonging to a sitting human.
“Listen.” He said sternly as he lifted her off the ground by the back of her coat. Now that the girl had a degree of super strength, he could be somewhat rougher in how he handled her.
“Hi Bill!” she laughed back with a wide smile.
Seeing her smile, he smiled a little too, but then caught himself as he chided her actions. Telling her to not cause trouble and act her age, he then instructed her to paint the Marine symbol on the sides of Boss and finally that she’d be sorry if he had to come looking for her.
Happily agreeing to paint Boss, he reminded her to do a good job, and if she couldn’t to find Pearson.
“Don’t worry Bill, I’m an excellent painter!” She said with a laugh, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Boss start turning a lighter shade of blue.
He let her down while shaking his head and then gathered his list and headed off the ship.
Even in a Marine-controlled port they wouldn’t leave the ship unattended. The six Officers would take turns staying on board. The duos were naturally Ricky and Sasha, Pearson and Willy, then finally Nelson and Miyagi.
For now, it was Nelson and Miyagi who was staying on board, and behind Bill a throng of his men spoke back and forth while walking towards Steel City.
Bill also wanted to explore around but his first order of business was to hire the ports shipwrights to repair the damage done to his office and replace whatever needed to be.
Vergo had killed most of the ships technically skilled sailors, and since Bill had been too preoccupied with other things, the ship was already starting to show the signs of neglect as small nicks from various battles had begun to turn into slightly larger cracks.
Walking into the Customs office, Bill found the interior to be much simpler that the surrounding architecture would suggest.
There were overhead electric lights, but besides that, it was a brown wooden interior with simple bench-seating which made him think of the offices back on Vallipo.
On the far side of the room was a single large desk, and behind it was a sleeping overweight man wearing a green suit who had a book folded over his face.
Hoping to wake the man up, Bill shut the door hard and made sure his feet could be heard with each step, but despite the clop’ clop’ clop’ sounds, by the time he made it across the room the man behind the counter remained unmoved.
When saying ‘hello’ and knocking on the desk three times still didn’t wake the man, Bill started to reach over to remove the book, but no sooner than he started reaching, the man jumped up as if an explosion had gone off from under him.
Stumbling back with a “Whaaa?!” the overweight man looked up at Bill and with his blood pressure rising, barely stammering out: “o’Ah… Sir! I was just … er’… reading the docking manifest and got lost in thought!”
Nodding along, Bill raised his hand and told the man not to be alarmed. While sleeping on the job was not a good thing, this man wasn’t any sort of sentry and therefor it wasn’t a very serious matter if it only happened on occasion.
After telling the man to calm down, Bill gave his name and rank and then told the man his business.
“Ah, shipwrights? Y.yes Sir, we employ five teams, and we can definitely schedule you in.” Then moving with purpose, the overweight man sat back at his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a somewhat large manifest.
Reading through the document, he let out a series of ‘hms’ and ‘ahs’ before looking back up and saying: “Teams A, B, and C are schedules through at least next week, but we have Team D available in three days.”
Saying this, the man turned a piece of paper around for Bill to see, it was the wages each team charged, and the differences were stark. Team A cost twice as much as Team B, and so on down the list until Team E – who charged a pittance by comparison to the others.
When Bill asked about the reason for the price differences, the man answered in somewhat reverence saying that their Team A could even outperform the shipwrights at the famous Water 7, and besides that, the price reflected the materials each crew worked with.
Since the Frontier Run was a ship whose timber was reinforced by Aramaki, Bill opted for the best treatment possible. Deciding that it was worth it to wait the extra week and spend few million Beli if that meant smooth sailing during the rest of their voyage.
With his main piece of business out of the way, Bill spent some time speaking back and forth with the clerk and realized that no matter how cordial he was being the man never seemed to really relax.
He found it strange, but only strange, and after a few minutes decided to ask for directions and go. With the shipwrights hired, now he needed to replace his Snails and sailing equipment, and to get those he headed towards the Naval Supply Depot.
While Bill headed to the Supply Depot, Yoko was smiling to herself and had just finished painting the Marine symbol on both sides of Boss. She was happily getting ready to explore the island when she heard Nelson call over: “Mind what the Captain told you, little Bell.”
Her smile turned upside down, and looking over at the man, she yelled back: “I know what he said. Bill doesn’t need you to speak for him, Nelson!” before continuing to get her things ready.
For most Marines in the crew this rebuke would have been enough to make them shake their heads and drop it, but for Nelson it wasn’t so simple. He had lived for years on the bad side of the Captain, and had gotten the stick many times, so thought he was being kind by reminding the girl to listen.
For him, being kind was far from a given, and to see his kindness so easily discarded, his mood flipped and as he walked towards Yoko he snapped back loudly: “I’d say, you’re becoming a right hooligan and nincompoop to boot!”
As he neared, his voice got progressively lower until he was standing in front of the teenager: “Take this advice well, you believe that because the Captain loves you, your actions will go unnoticed and without consequence, but I tell you now that if you continue your chicanery then he will react in ways that you may not like!”
Deciding to respond to this reasonable argument by sticking her tongue out and kicking Nelson in the shin, Yoko began to laugh madly and run away while the big man hopped around on one foot crying out ’Hooligan!’ and ‘Nincompoop!’.
Jumping on Boss’s back she urged him to fly north over rows and rows of busy warehouses and shipyards before turning to journey westward. Having peeked at the map that Bill had gotten, she was headed towards forested peninsula called ‘Cannon Cape’.
Of course, she didn’t know what was there, but so what? She and Boss liked the woods and it had been too long since they had seen any.
And plus, who would stop her, she thought?
Bill had told her to not fly over the city or topaz mine, and for now, so be it. But he never mentioned the forests and so if anyone tried to stop her, they naturally couldn’t blame her for the consequences!
Flying low so she could enjoy the views, Boss arrived at a wide hilly grassland which was not too far from the either the city or the forest, where Yoko saw a group of kids playing with sticks and decided to investigate.
Directing the car-sized bug over, they quickly made their dramatic entrance by landing in the dead center of a mock battle in which half the kids wore rags over their lower faces and the others had bandanas over the top of their heads.
The recently molted Boss was a frightening sight but their credit only a few of the kids cried out when he landed with a *thud* and Yoko jumped off his back.
With a group of over twenty kids staring directly at her, Yoko tried to land heroically, then as she was standing up stylishly it struck her that she hadn’t thought of anything cool to say, and because she couldn’t introduce herself, she just stared back at the gawking kids.
This stare down occurred for quite a while until one of the braver boys spoke up by asking who she was, and then like a dam bursting, words flowed out: “I’m Yoko! And this is Boss the Beetle, but you can just call him Boss!”
Then seeing that the kids understood her, but were perhaps too cautious to reply, Yoko continued speaking: “We were going to explore in the forest, but I found you all here, and so I was wondering how come you weren’t playing there? I think playing battles would be more fun in the woods than in boring field!”
This struck a chord and all the kids nodded sadly, until another of the boys spoke up to vent his frustration “We used to play in the forest” then he continued with a balled-up fist “But the pirates took it over while looking for that legendary treasure and the Marines are too cowardly to do anything about them!”
“Marines aren’t afraid of anything!” Yoko interrupted, and when she said this, the group of kids only just seemed to recognize what she was wearing.
‘Haha’ a couple of the boys laughed and then started mocking her that she’d better not go into the woods, or she’d just have to surrender like the rest of the Marines!
Hearing their laughter and jeers for what to her seemed like a long time, Yoko stomped her feet hard enough to crack the ground, and when she did so, the laughing boys turned pale while some of the other smarter kids directly ran off.
But to the others who stayed, she looked at them and said: “You’re lucky I’m not supposed to act up right now or THAT would be YOU! But I’m still going to make you eat those words!”
When the previously laughing boys took a half step away, Yoko waved her hand and said: “Not like that, you guys aren’t even worthy of my hammer! Instead, why don’t we make a deal?”
‘A deal?’ answered the boy who had called Marines cowards.
“Yeah! The deal is this, if I get rid of those pirates then you all have to take back what you said about the Marines and never say another bad word about them ever again!”
At this point, it had to be recognized that Yoko was small for her age. Despite being thirteen she was still slightly under 5ft tall, and though she wasn’t petite, her body still hadn’t grown into anything resembling an adults.
So, it wasn’t a surprise that in front of her claims to get rid of the pirate’s that half of the remaining kids readily agreed while the other half tried to dissuade her from going.
“They even attack kids!” one smaller boy said.
“They like little girls the most!” an older girl chimed in.
“Hahaha, yeah, if you get rid of the pirates in Cannon Cape, I’ll make you my boss!’ one of the older boys added in, and adding to this momentum another boy laughed out that ‘If she gets rid of the pirates in Cannon Cape, I’ll join the Marines myself!’
These two lines seemed to be infectious for that group who had been laughing at her earlier and it wasn’t long before they were all adding in more and more grand claims about what they were willing to do should she somehow actually rid the forest of pirates.
All the while, unbeknownst to them, Yoko was listening to the claims one by one and memorized what each boy and girl wagered. She didn’t speak up until she felt that their bets would equal the seriousness of insulting the Marines.
“Alright!” she finally hollered, and that stopped the rounds of laughter. Then looking at the group gathered in front of her, she said: “You’ve made your bets! Now I need three days and I’ll clean those pirates up. One day to scout. One day to beat them with my hammer. One day to arrest them. So about it, do we have a deal or not?”
When the group heard her, half of them starting to dissuade again her while the other half started to ask what would they get if she lost.
Stumped by this question momentarily, in Yoko’s stated her opinion and offered her side: “You should already be glad I haven’t beaten you for insulting the Marines! But since you want more, how about this. If I win, I get all that you’ve said. If you win, I’ll give you a Devil Fruit.”
“How would she get a Devil Fruit?” asked one kid.
“Just one Devil Fruit?” asked another.
“Just one Devil Fruit!” Yoko erupted before breaking out in irritated laughter: “Do you know how much they’re worth? Do you think Devil Fruits just grow on trees?! If you don’t want to bet, then just take back what you said!” she said with finality and was answered by a blond headed boy who was wearing a big hat with goggles.
“Pirates looking for treasure have overrun our Jewel Island and the Marines can’t do anything about it. If you and that bug can get rid of the pirates then I, Roule Render, will become your Navigator!”
Nodding her head to this, Yoko twirled her hammer around in her fingers before jumping back on Boss.
Urging him to fly towards the forest, she hollered…
“Remember! Three Days!”
While Yoko began her journey, many miles away Bill had purchased a number of Snails to be installed in several areas of the ship and had just made it back to his office.
Sitting at a broken desk, he dialed a familiar frequency and watched as the Snail formed a cowboy hat and mimicked a charming smile.
“New Haven Science Division Headquarters, identify yourself.”
Returning a smile of his own, Bill answered: “Sorry for the delayed communication but we broke ways with the former Admiral. I’ll be sending you our new frequencies now.”
“Good!” Ranse called out on the other line, before quickly saying: “We’ve just got approval for three contracts. We’ll be starting for the East Blue by the end of the week.”
Thinking about their plans finally coming to fruition, Bill suddenly recalled Isaacs technologies and thought that despite everything, coming to the New World may have changed his life.
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic please hit the heart icon and consider leaving a rating!
Boss (after molting)
Spoiler [collapse]Roule Render
Spoiler [collapse]